Site fund raising

Hi everyone.

It's come to a point in the site's life where the current forum software is coming to the very end of its life (vBulletin 4). They stopped developing it some time ago when version 5 had matured and it's maintenance and security updates are now about to end.

For this reason we need to look at options to upgrade the site to a new forum platform. The obvious one is to go for the direct uograde to the newer vBulletin 5. However many of the original vBulletin development team left the company and set up a new company to develop a whole new forum software called https://xenforo.com I've been taking a look at this and it looks really good. The developers got frustrated with vBulletin because it's become quite big and bloated over the years, and wanted to build a new forum software from the ground up that was lightweight and contained up to date code.

What this does mean however is that to perform this upgrade I need to ask for your help. The licensing upgrade to either vBulletin 5 or Xenforo plus addons needed will cost between £200 - 300. I can't currently afford to fund this myself so need to ask if you would all be willing to help?

And whilst I know this site is only an enthusiasts site for a group of friends to share interests, if I can get the site upgraded I want to then try to get it back to where it was when we had a larger active community. I will have a bit more time towards the end of the year to devote to the site to start pushing some new content and work on development. And to finally get the plan to create a proper emulator and emulation section built.

Count on me :thumbs:

Cheers

Sure, I can pitch in. :)

The norwegian forum I've been on for about as long as I've been on this one has been using XenForo for years and it seems to be quite slick indeed. Plugins seem much better too. Should be a good change. :thumbs:

I could chuck in a bit, but I'm pretty hard up with only one wage coming in (and 3 kids, 3 bloody animals, 2 cars to run etc etc) so it really won't be much I'm afraid.

Go on then, I'll stick £20 in.

Out of interest, how does the free forum software compare these days?

Sure Dave. It would be a pleasure to chip in.

Do we get Membership upgrades for Contributing/being a Contribut0r? :cool:

Sure. I wanted to rejig the membership group levels a bit.

And cheers everyone for offering to help out.

Hi Dave,

Been using the site and forum ages now. Not been very active during the last years, but will definitely help out. :) I'd love to start posting more here and to help with the demo-section again if you're looking to give it a boost again. :thumbs: Anyway, I'd like to chip in £20 like Steve. Hope it'll help. :)

I have the strong feeling that it's not going anywhere with the forum, thus I wouldn't necessarily upgrade. I would of course gladly contribute, but I don't see the point.

I know that as admin, it's a lot of work and it takes a lot of time, and sometimes, especially if you have a family, that's exactly what you don't have. When did you say that we would change the Amiga format of the forum to Retro in general? I think we're talking about years ago, and not anymore recently. Plus the main page is also unchanged since I can't even remember.

So to revamp the whole thing could take you forever, and we probably never would see something happening but a construction site forum, or you wouldn't perhaps find the time at all. No blame here, at all. Like I said, I do understand. Determination is not everything. I doubt that Toni Wilen has a family :hmmm:

A way would be to find people helping with the administration, but you would need people with the knowledge, and I guess also with trust. And whom of us would that be, we're basically all grandpas here :D

I have to say that I lately visit the Retro Video Gamer (RVG) forum, where our member Zapiy is moderator and keeps the site together. He send me an invitation years(?) ago, but I never really visited, as it was quite small and not busy, but now it has grown to a great site, and the forum covers exactly what we want to do here, everything retro. Mods are nice, and the community also seems to be pretty decent. I'm actually a reviewer there now, and I will surely write some more reviews for the site.

I would like to see something like that for this forum too, but then again, do we need 2 of the same forums, with even the same members? I don't think so. Why not join efforts and make something good even better? I have no idea how that would work, on an admin base, but I think it would be nice. How many returning members do we have left here? Not even 10 I think. That's definitely not enough in my opinion, perhaps to keep a site running like it is, but definitely not to achieve what we are looking forward to.

I don't raise the white flag yet, don't get me wrong, and I won't shout RIP Classicamiga, but it seems that's the direction it has taken. I check the forum almost daily, and sometimes it happens that during 10 days, there was not even ONE single post, and if there was, somebody put up a funny picture. That's not what I think a healthy forum anymore.

And according to me, upgrading the whole software now, is casting pearls before swine. Changing the software means changing the content, otherwise I don't see the point at all. But are you (we) willing to do that? Now? If not now, when? Paying up to 300£ to still have exactly the same, just in a different shape doesn't help. Then rather keep it the way it is now.

That are my thoughts, feel free to share :thumbs:

I fully understand that and you are correct. The only reason these forums used to be very active is because I used to try and generate new content daily and keep the momentum going.

Since I became a dad in 2012, then moved in late 2015 and took on this house renovation the whole site and forum took a back seat and has just been ticking along unchanged. House will be finished this summer however and Tom will be starting year 2 at school, meaning I will suddenly have free time on my hands come thr autumn, which is what sparked this idea to begin work again.

The main reason to consider the forum software upgrade is actually out of necessity because our existing platform vBulletin 4 is actually in maintenance status with just security patch updated, and this is about to end and version 4 will be abandoned. Not always an issue in the past if you didn't need to update it and it's working ok. However as technology moves on, and international security regulations with them, out of date sites relying on older versions of software reach a point where the server's hosts actively disable them from working. It hasn't reached that point yet here, but we already have to use a server patch to allow the site to run under an older version of php.

Regarding classicamiga.com, the big reason for no updates or work on the main site is because it's obsolete. It still contains some great content and our database, but the site itself is running on the original version of Joomla, which is years old. I also think its content isn't practical any more in its current format. How to fix that? Easiest solution/idea I've had for a long time is to build a new site around a commercial store cms platform, so that the creation of content becomes really easy. Each database entry can be added like you are entering a new item into a site storefront, and it can be catalogued and navigated easily just ad you would any internet shopping site. The byproduct of this is that I actually need to learn the store front software inside out before the end of this year for commercial site projects, so using it for classicamiga/classicretro would give me that experience with it, whilst updating this site to something new and fresh.

Why did the current main site fail? It remained unfinished and as a project was too grand an ambition for one admin and a handful of friends to achieve. That's why I don't want to create the same site again, and instead want to create an emulation site that just captures our passion for retro gaming and the demoscene in a form we can all edit and add to easily. Then once something is up and running consider migrating the content from the current site over.

Something I still find hard to locate easily and a single place with all information is different platforms and emulators. Loads of sites exist, but the information is scattered all over the place. For years I've wanted to draw or all together so if you want to run an emulator for a specific platform on specific hardware you can just look up the 2 and get the information. That's my dream anyway.

I also want to do something that still hasn't been achieved. Somehow get the demoscene into a wider audience. For all the years it's been running and all thr events held yearly the demoscene is still firmly underground. Not a single gamer I work will knew about it until I told them and showed then a few productions. We need to get this amazing scene out there, but not just Amiga.. all platforms! You can get some amazing productions on newer platforms that have been unlocked. Currently looking forward to see what they achieve on the Nintendo Switch now it's been hacked for example.

Obviously the forum isn't as busy as it once was, but I don't think it was ever very busy to begin with, at least not compared to other sites (amiga.org etc for example).

I just had a little nosey around the main site (haven't looked at it in quite a while), and couldn't help but noticed it looked a bit "Web 2.0" like. Isn't Web 2.0 a bit old fashioned nowadays? :nogood:

Changing from one CMS to another can be done, but it can require a lot of work. Some years ago, over at emaculation.com, the owner decided to change from WordPress to DocuWiki. The new DocuWiki site is still up and seems to work very well. It took quite a bit of effort to manually extract and transfer the old content though.

Web 2.0? That term refers to pretty much all current websites. A first generation technology Web 1.0 website generally refers to a static site using fixed code held in single html pages. Web 2.0 refers to dynamically generated content utilising serverside technologies to deliver the content.

Therefore classicamiga is very much within the Web 2.0 concept. However that's a pretty obsolete term, even when creates. Lol

Current sites are more likely referred to as HTML 5 sites to indicate they are based on newer technology, utilising xhtml and css 3 to dynamically build webpage from database driven content.

Interestingly Web 3.0 is still actually a theory and not really yet a reality. The idea is that Ai would be utilised by servers to collect all data from around the world and utilise it to build websites themselves, meaning no human intervention. That however imo would remove the whole point as the design and copy of a website is normally unique to its creator.

Regarding the site, it's not a surprise it's looking a bit dated as it was initially created in 2006 and upgraded to a newer design a couple of years later.

DC makes several valid points....

& with the lack of Traffic on this site..... "If it ain't broke, - don't fix it".... :shades:

The issue however is one of necessary. Our current forum software vBulletin 4.x is at the end of its life. Update
development support has ended and security patch support about to end. Other then security the other issue is supported server versions. The server companies are quick to cut off older php and mysql support as soon as thr versions fall behind supported releases. We are already running tbe site using a retrograde php version patch, which costs so much extra every 3 months to retain support for the version of php we need. That's not going to be available forever.

So really the main issue is upgrading the forum software to either the new version of vBulletin, or an alternative so the site can continue running into the future.

However, I do also want to get back into developing a retro site into the future from thr ground up focusing on emulation, which has been my intent for a long time. This autumn will be the point where I can start to focud on personal projects finally again after so many years having to deal with family issues and house renovations.

Okay Dave & what's the new software going to cost so we can get away from dead end support? :huh2:

As mentioned in the first post, between £200-300.

....and how much do we have raised so far?

£0 towards the upgrade so far.

Can't remember how i donate last time? Is it a paypal link?

Best to send directly to my PayPal account dave@classicamiga.com to avoid excess fees.

Just send you 30 Euros, should be around 25,71 Pounds. :)

Brilliant. Thank you.

"cough"

....FTP space Dave!....

....Still on bloody AmiBay....

Send me the deets for space & I will make PP payment as soon as. :spam:

I just sent you a £30 donation via PayPal. I selected the option to 'send money to family or friends', but I used a debit card, so I've no idea if you'll get charged a fee. Please let me know if you do or don't.

Thanks Steve. It didn't change any fees so that was good.

Gong to start testing our upgrade options very soon.

So where does CA stand? One thing I have found (and everyone else has too) in life is it never goes to plan; thinking there is time, and actually having time and then using the time for the thing you want is very tricky...

Dunno about CA but I'm practically on my ass on the floor. Dig a hole and chuck me in it

Where does it stand? As in its future? It's not disappearing as it's had many years of love put into it in the past, and the forum is our home.

Regarding future development. As said, we all have real life getting in the way. It will however get dragged into the modern era fairly soon. I had to put any real plans on hold in recent years due initially to being a full time dad, then to my old house flooding twice and having to move into rented twice, and then my new house being a big renovation and restoration project (returning it to its 1030s glory has so far taken 3 years). Plus lots of family events, the most recent being my Mothrr-in-law's move very close to us in a nice bungalow last thursday.

Hopefully life won't throw anything else my way, although my brother-in-law's liver cancer is terminal, so that's going to happen at some point possibly this year.

How much have we got in the Kitty now H?

About £60 I think.